Leo's most recent find is not just preservation of gaming history. It's a discovery, plain and simple. As it turns out, Cyberlore Studios, the team behind such hits as Warcraft II: Beyond the Dark Portal, Heroes of Might & Magic II: Price of Loyalty, Entomorph and Majesty also experimented with action gaming. Their later success with MechWarrior 4 expansion packs proves their competence in that regard, but at the time when they developed Emissary, they were completely green.

Initially, they planned to use the Build engine that fueled Duke Nukem 3D but made a risky decision of switching to Unreal Engine, which at the time was still in its infancy. Despite frequent and drastic changes Epic made when developing Unreal Engine, they still managed to create content... and it was high quality content. The developers paid a lot attention to detail. Unfortunately, in early 1998, due to budget cuts within GT Interactive, the game was cancelled before anybody announced it in the first place and so it disappeared in the darkness of oblivion.

Or not.

Those of you who obtained the X-COM: Alliance leak (or more specifically: the little archive Leo released with design docs and various other little treasures) may have discovered several text files authored by none other than Tim Sweeney. Within them, early licensees of Unreal Engine were mentioned (as well as some of their projects) and Cyberlore was among them. Leo then set out to find the people behind Emissary -- and his search has given fruit. One of the developers has provided two large archives with early Emissary content and although it wasn't the most recent they made, it's still pretty impressive. Better yet - there are several treasures linked directly to Unreal history contained within.

- several apps containing sample stuff already recovered with X-COM files.- Unreal.ucx source that Leo managed to compile under May 1997 Unreal build.- September 1997 Unreal build (no maps or textures from Unreal, but Unreal.ucx IS in, in its original, unmolested form!)- An old version of Seti.s3m music file- four files from 1996 -- two t3ds, one utx and one unr (the last two are totally unopenable by normal means, but work is being done in order to hex-edit-hack-out things off'em- A file from March 1998 Unreal beta build. Unopenable by normal means, but who knows what code or other stuff we can hack out...- A text file detailing planned features for the Unreal expansion pack. How much different is it from Unreal: Return to Na Pali!

Should anyone want to take over the Emissary project and finish the game, significant effort would be required. However, regardless of whether someone chooses to perform this task or not, one thing is certain: Leo has once again done something incredible. He unearthed a title we wouldn't have found out by normal means. And, in a way, I had my role in it as well, albeit indirect -- if it weren't for my assistance in recovering X-COM: Alliance, we wouldn't receive Tim Sweeney's log file which led Leo to this.

The most important thing...

When will this be released to the public? Soon. Right now we would like to avoid scaring off any other Cyberlore people Leo may contact in the future. However, should there be no further findings in a couple months, you have my word: you'll have that build as it is.

In the meantime, please observe this image gallery, showcasing Cyberlore's work done on Emissary's maps.

Now... as you can clearly see, Unreal guns were placed on some maps. And yes, they're (partially) functional. One map even has an enemy, that one comes from Emissary. So, there's a lot to see. However, the entire content is in alpha state, obviously. No real scripting or gameplay. Just bare-bones levels to wander around on.

I am the Unreal archivist and historian. If you have something from the past of Unreal that I don't have, do tell.

My screenshots are in software rendering, therefore the lighting isn't colored (for some reason software back then could only do non-colored lights aside colored zones) and masked textures are not properly displayed too. See that green grate or windows you cannot see through? In Glide it displays correctly.

Since there were some player skins exclusive to version 0.87, Leo decided to export them out of there and import them to final Unreal. The process can easily be repeated when the build is out. All player skins are included, some are quite different.

In the November 1997 build as seen in the famed 'X-Mas trailer', those skins are actually seen sometimes. Also build 0.87 has the same krall skin as seen in that particular trailer, except it doesn't have the actual skin for the Elite Krall, which is the one that attacks you in the temple of Jrath (Morose.unr) after dropping down, together with two regular Krall, as seen in the 'X-Mas trailer'. But that skin is missing in the September build and both Krall and its Elite counterpart use same skin instead.

It would appear that '97 Elite Krall skin is the only Krall skin we're missing currently, as it is also present on many screenshots (that really dark skin). And then there was also the Krall Lord skin seen in one screenshot, but being very similar to this one - only a bit different in color. So in total we have 7 different Krall skins:- The DarkAngel skin from 97 test demo (full ucx stuff), which is actually late 96 skin,- the regular Krall skin from 97 test demo,- the september 97 skin which also appeared in many screenshots and the 97 trailer (the uv maps are same as the test demo Krall though so it won't fit on 98 Kralls at all sadly),- then the February 98 beta two skins- and two final Unreal skins.

Hurt me plenty, are these Krall really banging like rabbits or something? They certainly *multiply* like ones!

I am the Unreal archivist and historian. If you have something from the past of Unreal that I don't have, do tell.

I have a krall model that has all of the animations of the final krall, but it uses the UV maps of the krall from the tech demo. It's more accurate than the one I already released. If you want, I can upload it in a few days, with different classes for each krall that use those UV maps.

The new krall skin from the trailer confirms that the titan is supposed to be equipped with armor. They share a lot of the same characteristics.

Another test map, this time with the weapons "somewhat" working and fixed. Keep in mind that once you pickup a weapon you cannot pick other one in this broken version or even switch back to it.

Also, there is a working eightball projectile too, but the damn thing crashes the game because of the physics its set to, bounce flag freeezes that version of Unreal no matter what, when the projectile hits wall.

Leo extracted all textures and sounds from the unreal.ucx file included with the September 97 build that Emissary runs on. It took some time, especially with the sounds since they were in .ufx format. Also .ufx format had several post edit sample settings, even pitch randomizer and stuff so you didnt need to randomize pitch in uscript, it was mostly used with some of the 96 leftover sounds, like the automag for example so it didn't always sound the same but that gets lost during the export.

Bug report incoming:There's a certain masking problem. At the top of the wand, the two "wings" at the side of the central crystal have black areas which could use masking!

Also, there seems to be a little problem with the Krall's back being a bit round stretched out. It is especially seen in the Dark Angel skin which is more detailed. Just observe the Krall's back on the chest level. You'll see the problem.

I am the Unreal archivist and historian. If you have something from the past of Unreal that I don't have, do tell.